Around Here Week 50: 12/11-17

 A glimpse into what it is like to live in our home just this moment. 

photo cred: St. David's Sunday School

photo cred: Lynsdy (thank you!)

Grey's wrist Monday night (eek)

Intentional Outdoor Hours: 738+ hours (of 1000)
A lot of holiday chores and chilly weather have me tucked inside and not eager to get out. So I've been hovering at this same spot for the last few weeks. We have a mini getaway coming up at the end of  the month 

Reading and finishing How We Show Up by Mia Birdsong. It took me a long time to finish it but only because it was filled with so much incredible insight on every page. How do I make every person in the world read it? It was really good and my brain is firing at high speed thinking of how to better support all the people in my life (and myself!) I started reading Worlds of Ink and Shadow by Lena Coakley which I'm borrowing from a fellow staff member at school (thanks Jennie!) 

Spending the whole day with my mumma. Mum and I headed out to Altoona and visited Sam's Club, Target, and then had lunch at Olive Garden together. Just the two of us! A rarity in the last twelve years and I was so happy to spend the day together checking off items from my holiday shopping list and chatting and laughing. Thank you mum, for a wonderful day! We also stopped by Kate's house where she and Michael were housing our basketball hoop like a Santa's workshop for us! (thank you for picking it up and keeping it. love you!) 

Christmas cookie baking: we made spritz cookies and peanut butter blossoms - the girls helped both times. I borrowed an electric (!) cookie press from circa 1974 from our FCS teacher at school (thank you Jenny!) because the kids lost all my little cookie press design coins (ugh). But the electric press worked pretty well and I'm glad I got them done because they are one of our favorites! 

Tolerating (barely) Olive's new trick of removing her own pants AND diaper constantly. We have only a few onesie/snap type shirts for her now (since she's in a 2T), and so if she can, she takes it all off and runs around bare butt. In my bedroom one day this week as I was folding clothes she said, "Mum, Ew. Poop" and pointed to the floor where SHE had pooped. good grief. #sendhelp 

Gift shopping! The kids had their Santa's workshop event at the elementary school this week. Then on Saturday, the whole crew went to 5Below to do our annual sibling Secret Santa. The kids all pulled each other's names, then we go to the store and they walk around the store and talk about things they like/want aloud hoping their secret Santa will hear them (LOL). Then each kid gets to pick out a few things for the sibling they picked. They are in charge of wrapping the gifts at home too - they love this activity so much and it makes Christmas morning so special when they give each other the gifts. 

Choo-choo train'ing it up the driveway. B had to pull Lucille up a few times this week because of ice and oh man, I love everything about our land except this dang driveway in the winter. 

Ice Storm day off from school. We had all six kids plus our nephew Wells at home for the ice storm day this week. The kids found funny and creative ways to pass the time - including pulling the babies around the circle on blankets like they were kings and queens! Rust and Reddy made 800 cushion jumping forts and we baked (and ate) a lot of cookies too.

Deep, deep cleaning our bedroom and oh! the incredible relief and joy of having an uncluttered, organized, cleaned and scrubbed bedroom. My mind feels immediately twice as peaceful. There was laundry that needed done (always), work shirts that needed ironed, keepsakes that had to go in the kids' memory boxes, and Halloween and Thanksgiving random decorations I had just been stashing in there until I got time to put them away. Also - the socks! The single socks who lose their match somewhere in the black hole of our house - we did one last attempt to match socks and then threw the singles away! It took an entire day of both B and I working non stop (which meant the rest of the house was mostly trashed by the kids) but having that checked off the list before the holiday is honestly everything.

Having school spirit - I organized our monthly staff potluck and it was "Christmas movie" themed. Our staff is the best and they all went hard for the theme. Brandon and I brought pizza (Home Alone), we had Twinkies (Die Hard), a crockpot roast beef/beast (The Grinch), peanut butter chocolate balls (schweddy balls from the SNL skit!), ritz crackers with can cheese (Four Christmases or-dou-vera) - just to name a few of the awesome buffet. The staff lounge was also "Elf'ed" by our secretary Melissa with the help of the Life Skills class. Melissa and I had some hilarious Stacy in the Trophy Case-y ideas this week too. Anything to boost morale in a school these days, my friends! 

Teaching and finishing up the first Spanish 1 novel (Capibara con Botas)! Proud of them for reading an entire novel in Spanish! Spanish 2 Honors started a Holiday commercial tournament where we watch company commercials in Spanish and then complete activities. My Spanish 2 2nd period class is in charge of our door decorating for the school wide contest. The theme is Christmas villain and we've chosen Gremlins! Spanish 3/4 continued reading La Llorona and are on target to finish it before winter break! 

Sporting Gem went to watch her team play in the final playoff game on Sunday (thank you Hunsburgers for taking her!) and B started his winter basketball league in Franklin, he also had a football meeting for the youth league too. Grey had basketball practices during the week and only two games because the third game was postponed on the ice/snow day. At the first game at Meyersdale, he tripped and landed on his wrist. It swelled up almost immediately and he had little to no strength in it without pain. Our trainer (and sweet friend Jenilee) checked him out and was able to tape him up. The swelling is going down with icing and rest, so no one thinks it's broken so he wants to play it out until is better. LOL, athletes. 

Making roast beef in the crockpot, beef veggie soup (with the leftovers!), cream cheese chicken taquitos, baked chicken and veggies, stir fry ramen and shrimp, and pork roast. Since we have our new Ninja Toaster Oven (obsessed) we had a "toast bar" one evening where we made a bunch of toast (we can make 9 slices at a time in our Ninja) and then had jellies, cream cheese, peanut butter, lunchmeats and cheeses all on the table to assemble whatever kind of toast you wanted. We did go through a loaf and a half of bread, but It was a big hit - 10/10 recommend when you don't feel like cooking a proper meal.